Food science expert: Genetically modified crops are overregulated

February 18, 2013

It has been almost 20 years since the first genetically modified foods showed up in produce aisles throughout the United States and the rest of the world, but controversy continues to surround the products and their regulation.

Bruce Chassy, a professor emeritus of food science and human nutrition at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, believes that after thousands of research studies and worldwide planting, "genetically modified foods pose no special risks to consumers or the environment" and are overregulated.

Chassy will elaborate on this conclusion at the 2013 meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Boston on Feb. 17. During his talk, "Regulating the Safety of Foods and Feeds Derived From Genetically Modified Crops," Chassy will share his view that the overregulation of GM crops actually hurts the environment, reduces global health and burdens the consumer.

Farmers have witnessed the advantages of GM crops firsthand through increases in their yields and profit, and decreases in their labor, energy consumption, pesticide use and greenhouse gas emissions, Chassy said.

Despite these benefits, various regulatory agencies require newly developed GM crops to be put to the test with rigorous safety evaluations that include molecular characterization, toxicological evaluation, allergenicity assessments, compositional analysis and feeding studies. This extensive testing takes five to 10 years and costs tens of millions of dollars, and Chassy argues that this process "wastes resources and diverts attention from real food safety issues."

"With more than half of the world's population now living in countries that have adopted GM crops, it might be appropriate to reduce the regulatory scrutiny of GM crops to a level that is commensurate with science-based risk assessment," Chassy said.

During his talk, Chassy will chronicle the scientific tests used in pre-market safety assessments of GM foods and elaborate on the evidence from thousands of research studies and expansive GM plantings that he says show these crops do not present risks to consumers or the environment. The overregulation of GM foods is a response not to scientific evidence, Chassy said, but to a global campaign that disseminates misinformation and fear about these food sources.

The amount of the world's farmland given over to genetically modified (GM) crops grew 10% last year, with the United States remaining the biggest zone for the altered produce, according to a study released in Brazil Tuesday.

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5 comments

"With more than half of the world's population now living in countries that have adopted GM crops, it might be appropriate to reduce the regulatory scrutiny of GM crops to a level that is commensurate with science-based risk assessment," Chassy said.

Seeing as how it is known that genes often have more than one function, and in many cases there is no way to know what unknown functions may arise when such genes are placed into an alien organism(our food,) then it is prudent, and very much scientific, to do all manner of safety testing on any GM food.

Running blindly ahead with your new GM crop or fish is not scientific, it's corporate greed.

Every time one of these crops is created it permanently alters the world biosphere by introducing a life form which has never previously existed.

I'd just be happy if all foodstuffs that are GM products (and any processed foodstuffs that have GM products somewhere along the line - starting from the animal feed) were labeled as such.

Then the consumer could choose whether to accept any type of risk or not.

This would probably be enough to curb the hubris of the BioAg producers -at least in the short term- and is precisely why they spent so much money to defeat various GMO labeling initiatives here in the US.

However, Washington State voters were able to pass a labeling initiative, and other states will soon follow.

In the meantime, it is much cheaper and perhaps more effective for BioAg interests to continue to fund and promote the work of shills like this guy and the English guy, who, while parading their credentials to provide their statements with the semblance of veracity, conveniently ignore masses of evidence that directly contradict their claims of GMO safety.

Funny thing about labelling. Its no good. It will work for the short term but the biotech industry will keep flooding the environment with GMO's which will contaminate every food source around and it won't mater a jot if the label says GMO or not. There won't be any NO GMO food available. Then what?Best solution is to ban biotechnology in all its forms and send the scientists in this field to a dark distant black hole in space. But wait! They will say that is cruel and barbaric.Better ask the Chinese about that when they tell you about the antibiotic resistant bacteria in their major water courses that has been cross contaminated with GMO bacteria used in the GMO crops as the antibiotic marker. Oops! Death anyone? You won't believe just how many of the currently available antibiotics have now been rendered useless by this phenomenon. And do you know what it is called?Horizontal gene transfer.So much for there not being any problems with GMO food. :-) Now who is being barbaric?